Flow and heat transfer of natural convection in horizontal annulus with a heating element on inner cylinder

Experiments have been performed to study natural convection flow and heat transfer in a horizontal annulus when a square heating element is positioned at different locations on the inner insulated cylinder. The annulus is filled with water and has cylinder to cylinder diameter ratio of 3. The square heating element is small and has the width to annulus gap width ratio of 1/6. The range of Rayleigh number studied is approximately from 1.9 × 10 6 to 3.3 × 10 7 . It has been found that the flow pattern, the temperature distribution around the inner cylinder wall, and the local heat transfer rate around the outer cylinder are very sensitive to the location of the heating element. The heating element Nusselt numbers at various locations on the inner cylinder are obtained and well correlated against the Rayleigh number to the 1/3 powers. A maximum in the correlation parameter C is obtained when the heating element is placed 90 deg from the bottom.